Page 104 of The Courting of Bristol Keats
“Jasmine,” Bristol returned.
Two of the guests watching the meeting gasped.
A stout ogre-ish fellow in a mauve velvet suit and ruffled cravat stepped forward. He had furry pointed ears similar to Mae’s and a disposition to match. He corrected Bristol like she had made a tactless blunder. “TheLumessa, you mean.”
Evidently, no one called her by her familiar name except for a select few.
“She spoke correctly,” Jasmine said, then proudly introduced Bristol, like she was a long-lost relative. Bristol saw their surprise. More introductions followed, and Bristol was just as surprised to learn their names. Raphael, Henri, and maybe most surprising of all, a squat, plain man with long sideburns and a rumpled gray coat but an easy smile, Robert Kirk. She had read about him in Anastasia’s book. He was a scholar whose death was shrouded in mystery. Some believed he had actually disappeared into fairyland. Bristol knew the answer to that mystery now. She couldn’t wait to tell Harper. And was thistheRaphael?
Before she could find out, Jasmine said her goodbyes and excused them both.
“I’m sure you have a lot of questions,” Jasmine said as she led Bristol away. “We’ll take a look at the tick soon, but first, let’s go to my apartments and talk—the talk we should have had before.”
Before everything went wrong at the inn.
Before Tyghan appeared in the dining room and started yelling. Was that the “out” he had with the Lumessa? The reason he had to grovel?
As they walked, Jasmine explained why she wasn’t able to see Bristol sooner—that she hadn’t been well for a long time. “When one spends six centuries as High Witch of Danu, curses are bound to catch up with you.” She said that she and the Sisters had purged them regularly of course, but even the smallest of curses left marks. “They accumulate. I have good days, like today, but the bad days are winning, I’m afraid.”
“Who would curse you?”
She laughed. “Anyone and everyone. Enemies and comrades. Probably strangers too. Many hard choices must be made as the High Witch of a powerful kingdom. They do not please everyone. Some choices I made did not even please me. I served nine different crowns during my service.”
“Isn’t it the king or queen who has to make the unpleasant choices?”
A wry smile twisted her lips. “The administration of a kingdom is a complicated thing.”
“Meaning you had to do the dirty work?”
Her head dipped thoughtfully, but it wasn’t exactly an answer. “Here we are.”
She motioned to a circular foyer that led to double doors. Engraved in the marble over the door were the words,Celwyth Hall. Bristol had heard the name whispered behind cupped hands more than once.The Butcher of Celwyth.Did he live here?
“I’ve heard mention of a butcher of—”
“There is no butcher here, nor has there ever been. Celwyth is my family name and the architect of the conservatory. Pay no attention to the chinwag of court. Gossip is a favorite pastime of the idle.”
With a small motion of Jasmine’s hand, the double doors swung open.
They then stepped into yet another hall, this one a stark contrast to the one they just came from. It exploded with texture and color, reminding Bristol of an antiques shop overflowing with mismatched treasures. She looked up. Staggering tapestries that depicted pastoral scenes, or dancing gossamer-winged fae, or sweeping bloody battles hung from walls that were two stories high. Paintings hung in the spaces between tapestries, and scattered pedestals held towering sculptures of kings, queens, and creatures. Brass teapots, copper cauldrons, a life-sized wooden horse, and other collectibles were arranged throughout the room, and overstuffed chairs with colorful pillows were scattered between it all. Everywhere Bristol turned, there was something else to see, and this was just the first room.
“It’s a lifetime of collecting the things that please me the most. And the Sisters,” Jasmine explained. “They’re eager to meet you too, but first things first.”
She drew Bristol to an alcove by a window that held two blue silk chairs, and they sat. “I promised to tell you about your father. Where should we start?”
Bristol wasn’t sure. There was so much she didn’t know. “The beginning, I guess. How he came to be here.”
Jasmine’s long pale finger rested on her lower lip as she thought. She nodded, like his beginnings were playing out in her mind. “It came as a surprise to us all. Your father stumbled into our lives just after I passed the position of High Witch on to Madame Chastain, and the Sisters and I were getting Celwyth Hall in order. A fairy brought your father to court, offering him as a gift to the queen. Of course, everyone was horrified. Taking mortal babies had long been outlawed, but in some of the remote Wilds of Elphame, it still happened. The queen brought him to us to determine his parentage and return him, since the fairy couldn’t remember where she had gotten him, but it was no easy task. He was only a babe barely walking and not yet talking.”
Jasmine smiled, her gaze lost somewhere in time as if she was remembering him toddling about.She loved him.Bristol’s eyes stung, and she struggled to keep the ache in her throat from turning into something loud, messy, and embarrassing.
“Even his clothing gave us few clues. He wore the sweetest little white frock, but it was difficult to trace.” She said she and the Sisters spent three years searching for clues before finding out where he came from. “It was a mention in an old mortal newspaper about a missing boy. But I’m afraid, by then his parents were long dead. As you’ve probably learned by now, time in Faerie can pass quite differently from the mortal world.”
Bristol leaned forward, her attention gripped by the old newspaper article. “You found out who his parents were?”
Jasmine nodded, and as she explained, Bristol floated in a strange timeless space, connected by her own lifetime of questions, her father’s shocking journey to Elphame, and the truth that began over a century ago—with his parents.
In 1890, Sanjay Kumar was the handsome son of a wealthy Mumbai merchant. When he finished his university studies, he entered the family business, and on a trip to Boston with his father, he met Catherine Brennan, a young woman newly arrived from County Derry in Ireland. She was working as governess for the business associate hosting the Kumars for the summer. Love bloomed quickly, Sanjay sweeping the lovely raven-haired Catherine off her feet, and by the end of the summer, they were married. Sanjay stayed behind to look after his father’s interests in Boston, and before long, the couple was blessed with the impending arrival of a baby. It was while on a picnic with friends, two summers later, that their beloved child disappeared. One minute he was there, toddling across a meadow high with summer grass, and the next he was gone. Vanished. A brigade of searchers couldn’t find a trace of the boy, and after a few months, the search was abandoned, believing an animal had taken him. The heartbroken couple returned to Mumbai a year later. By the time the Sisters discovered the parents’ identities, they’d been dead for half a century.
